"I don't know who I am!" - Self-Criticism & AUTHENTICITY

SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Shelly Treacher from Underground Confidence. Today I'm going to be talking about self-criticism. I'm also going to talk about codependency. You'll see how self-criticism lies under a lot of comfort eating, but it also underlies a feeling of loneliness if you're lonely in relationship or lonely being single. So I'm going to talk about both today. There are a few aspects of self-criticism that I want to talk about today. In my last podcast, a long time ago, right at the beginning of my podcasting, I talked about the self-critic. I talked about how and where this comes from, the kind of things that the critic says to you, how you've internalized that criticism that you might have grown up with or heard in your culture and society, and then I've also talked about the inner child who is the response to the critic, the part of you that has become the critic, and the part of you that feels the criticism. And then I've also talked about how to overcome that kind of a critic and to work with and regulate the feelings of receiving the criticism. I've been calling this the adult voice, but another way of putting this whole subject is conflict and how to cope with triggering. You see, the self-critic is what's behind most comfort eating, and the self-critic is what we're triggered into when we perceive some kind of difference, disagreement, conflict, or threat. So it's also behind the reasons why we feel lonely. The self-critic can show up when we feel inadequate. If we make a bid for what we want, we fear that disagreeing with somebody or being different to them will mean that they won't like us anymore, and that we might lose them altogether. So we tell ourselves not to be the person we are. That's not actually that easy. So we might have to comfort eat to suppress who we are. Or we might reach to others to regulate that feeling, and to tell us that we're likable. The link here with everything I'm talking about is criticism or self-criticism. If you trace back feeling bad in some way, it's usually got a critic behind it, and even a lack of mirroring can be felt as criticism. And many of us default to the inner child when we feel criticized or have a lack of attention, which could lead to eating. So we need to collaborate with that child. Often this shows up in relationship. One of my wise clients has really embraced the word belonging. He's thinking about it in terms of be and longing. Being is something that he's aspiring to, and belonging, he's learning to see as something healthy. But he's also seeing the longing. It's quite normal for us to care what other people think, and often I hear from comfort eaters that they worry a lot about what others think of us. Again, this might be particular to our times as well. We've spent so much time on our own that we're not really sure how to socialise and think about other people anymore. I'm hearing from my clients that they're finding social occasions a little bit more awkward than they used to, because they care more about what other people think. I have many of my clients wondering what the difference is between connection and entanglement. One of my clients even said, It sounds like spaghetti which is a great response really, isn't it? It it's confusing. Spaghetti is such a good word to use though. I explained that I see entanglement as a reaction from perceiving threat, as a fear. And often the fear is not fitting in, so there's some kind of self-critic in there somewhere. The common ones I hear are I'm too sensitive, I'm too much for this person, my feelings are too much, I'm scared of them. Codependency is often present for comfort eaters. Codependency can show up in avoidance or in over neediness. I will actually talk about avoidance again soon because I didn't talk about that as much as I talked about ambivalent attachment before, so I'm going to talk about that one in my relationship podcast at the end of the month. But as I say this is often present for comfort eaters. Codependency is ruled by the inner critic and fear. It can happen when the inner child feels inadequate, and the way to cope with it is through compassion rather than trying to get rid of it or suppress it. The inner critic often tries to suppress us. People often try and stamp out these kinds of feelings, which of course leads to more self-criticism. Traditionally, as a culture, we neglect our inner children. We work hard, we don't allow ourselves to be ill, we eat, we drink alcohol, we get hooked on games or technology, or internet shopping, so we don't handle our triggering very well. Denial and blame and external reference or a quick fix are what we're all about in this culture. I have such a love-hate relationship with coffee. It's annoying because it I fear it's actually good for you in small doses, but I can't handle it, and actually I'm better off without it. I drank coffee in the last week and when I was recovering from my illness because I was too fatigued to get on with what I really wanted to get on with in the day. Even for my supervision session, I almost cancelled, and then I had a cup of coffee, and then I had my supervision session, which absolutely helped me and I was very glad that I did it. But then I had the knock-on effect of being awake that night and feeling spacey headed, which I really don't enjoy, so I've come off coffee again now and I do feel a lot more balanced. It was a really interesting process for me and for this podcast. I noticed that it really quickly became a dependency. In the morning I'd be looking forward to that coffee and I'd be almost annoyed at the thought of not having it. I chose to monitor this process and be curious about it rather than tell myself off, which is what I'm trying to ask you to do. It was interesting to me because eventually, a few days later, I started to feel better, and I felt like I could cope with giving up the coffee. So I did, and I feel a lot better. I was relieved because it proved to me that what I'm trying to teach you here actually works, and I have to keep checking in with this to make sure that what I'm trying to teach you is something that's going to help. So the thing that helped me was staying in touch, was being mindful, present, and in my experience, and my body told me when to stop drinking the coffee. There was one morning when I just thought, okay, today's the day that I can cope without it. I don't think that I would have taken that opportunity if I was less in touch. So that's why often one of the things I talk about here also is how to be in touch with your body and your experience. For me, that's staying in touch with the self-critic, the child, and the adult all at once and assessing what's right for me, what's really right for me with all the information I've got. In a pragmatic, rational way, but also in an experiential, unconscious, emotional way, I allow my unconscious to tell me, it's time, chalet, you want to be clearer, so it's time. Often people who come to see me for comfort eating say that they feel like they are being controlled, like something outside of them is telling them to eat, and that they can't ignore it or feel powerless to do that. I suppose what I really want to say about this is that you are the only person who can look after your triggering. It might actually be the only thing that you can learn to control because it's inside you. I read somewhere recently that romantic love's purpose is to manipulate each other into getting our needs met. So it's actually less triggering if you can get a handle on your own needs and meet them yourself. It's the only thing you can control, like I say. Comfort eating can be a lot about not getting your needs met. Not having your needs met could be the reason that you comfort eat, but of course it leads to you really still not getting your needs met. And then piling on the criticism for what you're doing. What we're all about here is creating a pause between your feeling and your reaction, so a pause between hearing the self-criticism and having an instinctive feeling or reaction, the reaction being perhaps to reach for food. It might seem like this happens in a really quick instant, but if you start to slow it down, you can see that so many things happen in between the feeling and the reaction, and you can slow that down even more. In reality, it's true that when you stop, it's then that things start to come up, and that's what we're trying to avoid when we eat. But that's an unconscious process, and actually there are a lot of benefits from slowing down and acknowledging how you really feel. One, most obviously, because you can address what's going on for you. Two, because it allows you to take responsibility rather than continually trying to get something from someone else or from a substance. And then third, it allows your own resource. This is something that I teach my clients over and over again. We go through this process over and over again because it's really hard to remember this. I also go through it myself over and over again because I'm also human and sensitive. Whenever I feel suddenly anxious or questioning or negative or upset by something, I try to acknowledge, oh yeah, look, there's my child response again. What happened? As I've explained to you, I'm in a long distance relationship. Recently we've been unable to see each other for various practical reasons. Last time we saw each other was for half the time that we usually do, and what I experienced was well we had a lovely day together, we really enjoyed each other's company, and then towards the end of the day we were getting closer and closer, and my heart was opening up more and more, and then we suddenly had to stop. I know that what I experienced at that point was a childlike triggering, because I stopped to ask myself how old I felt, and I felt about eight years old. I suddenly remembered standing on the school steps waiting for my mother to arrive after work to pick me up. This was quite common that she wouldn't arrive on time, and I'd be the only little person standing out the front steps waiting for my mother to arrive. I know that sounds really sad, but please don't feel too sorry for me because what happened next? I checked in with that little girl and I asked her what she needed. She said I just want you to look after me. And so I did. I told her sweetheart, I'm gonna look after you. I'm gonna take you home and just look after you. We're gonna spend the evening together. And this probably only happened for a millisecond. But then I looked after my little girl. And you know sometimes I have to do this repeatedly, and so that's also what I'm trying to tell you really and trying to normalize for you. The waves can come quite often sometimes when you feel abandoned or when you feel that triggering into childhood or something traumatic that's happened to you, or the part of you that feels criticized, and then feels the response of that criticism. Or the part of you that feels inadequate or feels like you don't fit in in some way. It can come up and be overwhelming, and we can think such negative thoughts at that time and be overtaken by that. But it's just so helpful to recognize that this probably comes from something else, and to allow the wave to come in order to understand it and to provide compassion for how you feel. I experience, and a lot of my clients experience, that it's through this process that the resource comes up naturally. The adult comes in and says, Okay, that's not what's really happening right now. Let me provide something better. Being more present leads to being more objective and calmer. Changing your eating habits, or indeed your love life, requires really honest self-reflection. Perhaps asking how your habit is really affecting you and your loved ones. Many, many of my clients who've changed their eating habits or changed their relational habits have reported feeling a lot better. They report feeling clearer headed physically, but they also report feeling just generally calmer and happier and more in control. Feeling more empowered, more interested in their own life, and more able to connect with other people. Which is often what I experience too. Facing what lies behind an addiction or a compulsion or a certain habit that's not serving you so well anymore gives you an incredible opportunity to get to know yourself differently and to see what your life could be like without it. It's about creating a safe way for difficulty to come up and be worked through. This is what my groups are about too. And I'm also aware that resistance will come up. Even if you're thinking right now, my life would be so much better if I didn't criticize myself, you will still have resistance to letting it go. Much as I advise with everything else, embrace that resistance and ask what makes you struggle with change. This is the trigger, and it's coming up again. There are different levels of activation, but basically the trigger is the child unable to connect with you or with another. It's the same as any compulsion, with food, with people, with texting, with booze, with scrolling, with doom scrolling included. There's an attachment object and something outside of you that you're getting your reference about you from, and your sense of self-worth. Often the story is that you're too much time and effort, or you're inadequate in some way. Blame is very much part of this process. Blame is the fear of intimacy, or of being really known. Authentic relating, whether it's to yourself or to other people, is the story of how you are responsible for your own energy. Your language and behavior is an indication of where you are on that line. The blame that may come from the inner critic or from the external critic is a really difficult charge for any of us to handle. As children, we find it almost impossible, and so we can grow up not really knowing how to handle it. So it's all about learning how to receive ourselves and other people who might be different to what we think they should be or what we think we should be. Gabor Mate says in his book about addiction, which I'm gonna talk about next week, he says that we choose belonging a hundred percent of the time over authenticity. We absolutely do that, I think. If caregivers might respond negatively, then we really do that. It's through small tests of being honest and not getting rejected that we become more authentic. This is in yourself or with anybody else. I heard someone say in the embodiment conference recently that when we breathe together, we know we belong. This is what I emulate in my groups. So let's do that right now. Let's just breathe. Take a breath. Just take a breath and move and stretch in any way that feels comfortable to you right now or satisfying. And know that there may be other people doing this at the same time as you, listening to this podcast. At least you know you're with me doing it. Let's just breathe. Of course, this might be triggering, but we're together. Recovery is about connecting with who you really are, whether you do that in company or just on your own. I'm reading a book at the moment called Revolutionary Love. It teaches that there is no stranger and to see people that way. It sees everybody as a part of you that you don't know yet. And I would encourage you to see that in yourself too. One of my much loved clients said recently that she uses a compass pendant to put her in touch with herself, with her inner being and her inner knowing, with her empowerment and who she really is. It's a reminder to connect with her path. So that's a lovely idea. Is there something that you could use to put you in touch with who you really are and what really matters to you? Fundamental to this process, I believe, is learning how to tolerate emotion, recognizing that you might be extremely self-critical of how you feel, and learning bit by bit to take the risk of holding that emotion and riding it like a wave that does pass. This is something that I can help you with. Check out my groups on undergroundconfidence.com. I'd love to really see you flourish. Next week I'll be talking more about addiction. If you have any questions or comments, I would love to receive those, so please be in touch. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next Wednesday. This is Underground Confidence with Shelly Treacher.